11/16/12

Snowy Reception

"The spirit answered not, but pointed
onward with its hand."

- Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol
(1843).

Een licht in de duisternis (A Light in the Darkness, 2012) is the seventh entry in the
Bureau Raamport series, recording the daily caseload of a pair of Amsterdam
homicide detectives, Peter van Opperdoes and Jacob (last name unknown), who
were modeled on their creators – former homicide cop Appie Baantjer and now
part-time detective Simon de Waal. Originally, the books were published under
the byline Baantjer & De Waal, but after Baantjer passed away, at
his request, the series was continued as De Waal & Baantjer with
Baantjer's share of the royalties going to charity.

On a night, a dark and cold December
night, Peter van Opperdoes wakes up to find the city wrapped in a blanket of
snow and inclines to melancholic musing on things past, when the whispering
voice of his late wife disturbs his reverie and encourages him to take a short
walk. As I noted in my review of Een mes in de rug (A Knife in the
Back, 2012), the ghostly, disembodied voice of Van Opperdoes' wife is a
non-intrusive, supernatural entity hovering in the background and she's not
allowed (from the higher up's) to intervene in human affairs. She's merely
there to give spiritual support to her husband or, in this case, act as a
catalyst.

Van Opperdoes strolls through the
deserted, snow covered streets and the quiet, dream-like image of the city
gives him a sense of unreality, as if he fell through the cracks of time,
expecting any moment a hansom cab coming down the street or bump into a 19th
century gendarme, but his actual discovery isn't any less strange. Between a
troupe of statues, now mantled in robes of snow, someone placed a sculpted head
of clay with a candle on the ground – it's flame flickering like a ghost light.

This dreamy sequence is probably my
favorite part of the book and shows that De Waal can write, and I almost wished
he continued this style of story telling through out the book, but morphing it
back to a straight-up police procedural was probably the best decision. When
Van Opperdoes and Jacob revisit the scene the next morning, when life resumed
its normal tenor, it conveyed that sense of waking up – with everything snapping
back to normal. Except that the head is still there! It's a recognized as a
young man, named Martin, who's a local and his mother hasn't heard of him from
in three months.

Martin's father Willy, an intimate
acquaintance of the police who spend most of life behind bars, went missing
around the same time and thus begins a long pool expedition search pass cafés
and even an obscure coffeeshop – and nearly everyone they question seems to be
either criminal or appear to have close ties to them. This eventually leads
them to a crime-scene that went undiscovered for months, but the dry conditions
of the house and the cold weather has preserved it remarkably well and it was briefly
teased as a locked room mystery.

However, I'm long since pass wanting a
baffling impossible crime from De Waal. Ok. Maybe not that long. But the first chapter of A Light in the
Darkness has convinced me that a double-layered story, one taking place in
the time of C.J. van Ledden-Hulsebosch and the other in the present with Van Opperdoes
and Jacob, with the two threads tying together in the end, would be even better.
I even have a title that fits the series: Een gebed zonder einde (a proper,
but not literal, translation would be A Never-Ending Story). It also
fits into the religious themes Baantjer was so fond of working into his plots
and sort-of a nod to the Baantjer TV-movie De wraak zonder einde
(An Endless Wrath, 1999; co-written by De Waal).

Somehow, somewhere, Frederic Dannay is looking
over a copy of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and nods approvingly. I...
I just know he is.

De Waal & Baantjer

A note for the confused: De Waal co-wrote
a handful of excellent historical novels with Dick van den Heuvel about Van Ledden-Hulsebosch, a
real-life counterpart of Dr. John Thorndyke,or rather, a real-life colleague
of Dr. Joseph Bell – Conan Doyle's teacher whose methods of observation were adopted by Sherlock Holmes! I
always wondered, if that awful, untranslatable pun they had planned for a book
title (if you're curious, the title was Moord(w)apen) killed the series
prematurely. Their publisher had good reason to believe they had lost it after
their spoof of The Da Vinci Code(2003), in which Albert Einstein helped C.J.
clear up a dark conspiracy enwrapping Amsterdam (De Rembrandtcode, 2006). Note to self: reread that
series! Anyway, lets wrap things up here as well...

A Light in the Darkness was better than I anticipated and the story ended up not being just
another charming, urban police procedural that spends more time looking at buildings
(or other trivial matters) than at the clues. It's still a police procedural that
puts emphasis on investigative police methods and characterization, but
the plot was well put together and stands comparison with the works of Bill Pronzini and William L. DeAndrea.

I think Baantjer would've been rather
proud, if he knew he co-wrote this book. Two years after his death. The critics can defile him, decease
can kill him and his remains can be buried, buteven the most devout excorcist could not keep his "spirit" from the bestseller lists!

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The Usual Suspect

An Elementary Observation

Welcome to the niche corner, dedicated to the great detective stories of yore and their neo-classical descendants.

Witnesses' Statements

"It's my job to fan the fires of your imagination with tales of doom and gloom; right now I have another chilling tale for you. A tale of danger and mystery..."- Vincent Price (Grandmaster of the Macabre)."The detectives who explain miracles, even more than their colleagues who clarify more secular matters, play the Promethean role of asserting man's intellect and inventiveness even against the Gods."- Anthony Boucher.

"I like my murders to be frequent, gory, and grotesque. I like some vividness of colour and imagination flashing out of my plot, since I cannot find a story enthralling solely on the grounds that it sounds as though it might really have happened. I do not care to hear the hum of everyday life; I much prefer to hear the chuckle of the great Hanaud or the deadly bells of Fenchurch St Paul."- Dr. Gideon Fell (telling it like it is since 1933).